8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Modernity and colonization, still a useful volume, November 23, 2007
This review is from: The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power) (Paperback)
The reviews for this book here on Amazon are divided, and you can understand both responses, respect and rage.
This volume is what it claims to be: an account of colonization, Japan of Korea from the late 1890s to the early 1920s (but ending before the more brutal culling of the Imperial War Machine in the 30s and 40s).
The first half collects the various arguments made in Japan from the 1860s onward: cultural, racial superiority, expansion and capitalism, contending and competing with the West, in the creation of justifying colonization. Particularly useful if the reader has the basics on the ideology of colonialization, Albert Memmi, Franz Fanon, Edward Said etc. Or the other way around: for the reader who is reading up on colonial writings would find the non-Western discourse on colonialization interesting, the discourse on racial destiny and the Japanese "burden" to enlighten Asia, compared to the "White Man's burden."
The second half of this book catalogues, with official figures and many personal accounts of Japanese life in Korea, for the middle-class and aspiring middle-class entrepreneurs who sought to take advantage of the colonial government and the expansionist policies of the time. And it is particularly useful as a (scholarly) portrait of people, history written from the bottom up, instead of mainly from governments policy and war.
The book is written by a Japan scholar, from Japanese documents, so the reader must take into account the sources (and sympathies) involved, the author's lack of current Korean, Korean sources and scholarship, and the text's (near) absence of Korean agency alongside the efforts at Japanese economic absorption. It offers only a hint (in the occasional phrase) at the tolls of economic policies on "normal" Korean people as people (human beings with lives and names), in its report of the lives of "normal" Japanese. But perhaps that is not this volume's purpose.
For a volume written 10 years ago, it's a valuable and readable resource, more useful when read with the collected essays in "Colonial Modernity in Korea" that was published around the same time (Eds. Gi-wook Shin and Michael Robinson, 1998) for a fleshed out view of life in the late 19th century and early 20th.
Hopefully, almost 10 years after this volume, and with the emerging generation of East Asian scholars, trained in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, we'll find fuller, more nuanced and complex accounts of history.
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27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A biased yet interesting review of the annexation of Korea, June 11, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power) (Paperback)
The author reviews the history behind the annexation of Korea and presents it in the context of the industrialization of Japan. On a conceptual level the book is intriguing, but I feel that it trivializes the ethnic cleansing performed by the Japanese on the Korean race. The author admittedly knows that his research was biased by the generous amount of Japanese documents and not only the lack of Korean documents but his inability to read Korean language. All in all its worthwhile for readers interested in recent Asian history, Japan's industrial movement, or understanding Korean political history.
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15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
important work but biased and boring, November 15, 2003
This review is from: The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power) (Paperback)
This is a scholarly work and not "popular history." I say the book is important because this is really not a covered subject. Aside from being a bit boring and confusing for people not an expert in Japanese political hisotry during Meiji, I found it disturbing that the author cited only Japanese and English sources. And the majority of English sources are old (1960s). In the intro, the author freely admits he neither speaks or reads Korean (!)
So, this is a one sided version of history (from the imperialist side). We will have to wait for some of the very good Korean accounts to be written or translated into English. In the meantime, try Bruce Cumming's work on Korean modern history.
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